Geoffrey_Chaucer.jpg













Geoffrey Chaucer was born in the early 1340's. He died in 1400.
Chaucer was married to Phillipa Roet. Chaucer is considered one of the greatest English poets of the Middle Ages. He worked as an author, poet, philosopher, courtier and diplomat. Chaucer was very well educated and he studied law. He is most famous for writing the Canterbury Tales, a book of poems used to talk about English society at the time and about the church. Chaucer could read English, French, Italian and Latin. When Chaucer died, he was the first poet to have been buried in Westminster Abbey in the Poet's Corner.

"Now in that season it befell one day
In Southwark at the Tabard I lay,
Read upon my pilgramage to start
Toward Canterbury, reverent the heart,
There came at night into that hostelry
Full nine and twenty in a compant,
People of all kinds that had chanced to fall
In fellowship, and they were pilgrims all
Ridind to Canterbury."

"Alas! What wonder is it though she wept,
That to a foreign nation now must go
From friends, that her so tenderly have kept,
There is subjection to be set below
The will of one whose ways she did not know.
Husbands are always good, and were of yore;
Wives know it well-- now I dare say no more!"

Rachel Gordon